Dan Fogelman and Warner Bros. seem to be cozy lovers. The writer behind “Cars,” “Bolt” and “Tangled” but perhaps most importantly, this summer’s highly anticipated “Crazy, Stupid, Love.” has ridden the early buzz on that film all the way to a seven-figure payday for his next script which just happens to have a guy named Tom Cruise attached.
Deadline confirmed the done deal, as Warner Bros. paid somewhere in the neighbourhood of $2 million for the pitch. So what’s it all about? In the proposed film, Cruise would “play a politician who gets caught in an affair. With his reputation in tatters, the pol retreats to his hometown to lick his wounds, repair relationships and confront his past.” Sounds right in the wheelhouse of the stuff that usually comes from Fogelman’s pen, but the writer has been on a streak with the studio of late.
He got $3 million for ex-rocker dramedy “Imagine” that has Steve Carell attached to star and would mark Fogelman’s directorial debut and oh yeah, he took home $2.5 million for “Crazy, Stupid, Love.” And with none of these films hitting screens yet, Warner Bros. are banking that they will be huge and frankly, it’s hard to imagine they won’t be.
Up next for Fogelman is “My Mother’s Curse,” another script of his that is lensing with Barbra Streisand and Seth Rogen. Is this guy the Steve Zaillian of dramedies? Sure seems like it. At least he isn’t Allan Loeb. As for Cruise, he’s got “Rock of Ages” on deck and while he’s attached to a few projects — including Joseph Kosinki‘s “Oblivion” — nothing is settled just yet.
